LIFE OF BACON. 



mercy I cannot enough extol ; whereof the earl is a singular 

 work, in that, upon his humble suit, she is content not to 

 prosecute him in her court of justice, the Star Chamber, 

 but, according to his own earnest desire, to remove that 

 cup from him, for those are my lord s own words, and doth 

 now suffer his cause to be heard inter privates parietes, by 

 way of mercy and favour only, where no manner of dis 

 loyalty is laid to his charge, for if that had been the ques 

 tion this had not been the place.&quot; In this strain he pro 

 ceeded through the whole of his address. 



He constantly kept in view the Queen s determination 

 neither to injure her favourite in person nor in purse; he 

 averred that there was no charge of disloyalty ; he stated 

 nothing as a lawyer; nothing from his own ingenious mind; 

 nothing that could displease the Queen ; he repeated only 

 passages from letters, in the Queen s possession, complain 

 ing of her cruelty and obduracy ; topics which she loved to 

 have set forth in her intercourse with a man whom she was 

 thought to have too much favoured ; he selected the most 

 affecting expressions from the earl s letter, and though he 

 at last performed his part of the task, by touching upon 

 Hayward s book, he established in the minds of the hearers 

 the fact that Essex had called in the work a week after he 

 learnt that it was published. 



To those who are familiar with Bacon s style, and know 

 the fertility of his imagination, and the force of his rea 

 soning, it is superfluous to observe that he brought to this 

 semblance of a trial only the shadow of a speech ; and that 

 under the flimsy veil of an accuser there may easily be de 

 tected the face of a friend. 



In answer to these charges, Essex, on his knees, declared 

 that, ever since it had pleased her majesty to remove that 

 cup from him, he had laid aside all thought of justifying 

 himself, or of making any contestation with his sovereign; 



